Rick Holmes: Listen to more of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's message

Tuesday

Apr 29, 2008 at 12:01 AMApr 29, 2008 at 5:41 PM

Barack Obama, or at least the pols and pollsters on his campaign, wish the Rev. Jeremiah Wright would just shut up. I hope he'll keep talking. More to the point, I wish people would listen to him - for more than 30 seconds at a time.

Rick Holmes

Barack Obama, or at least the pols and pollsters on his campaign, wish the Rev. Jeremiah Wright would just shut up. I hope he'll keep talking. More to the point, I wish people would listen to him - for more than 30 seconds at a time.

It's not hard, at least if you have broadband Internet access. Go to YouTube and watch the extended version of Wright's sermon after 9/11, where he talks about watching the second plane hit the World Trade Center from Newark Airport, and used Psalm 137 to explore the biblical theme that "terror begets terror." Watch his entire interview with Bill Moyers Friday, his speech to the Detroit NAACP Sunday or his remarks at the National Press Club Monday. It's all on YouTube. If you don't know how to do it, ask a kid.

Most voters just watch the 30-second clips, and are buying the media's portrayal of him as a loony, unpatriotic extremist. If you think that's fair, consider your own minister, rabbi or priest. How many seconds of his sermon would you expect a stranger to listen to before pronouncing him a lunatic? If someone heard a 30-second clip of your priest denouncing America's "culture of death," would it be fair to brand him unpatriotic?

How would you feel if your minister and members of his congregation received death threats from people upset by 30-second excerpts? How would you feel if the orchestrated attacks on your pastor and your church were mounted for the most transparent political reasons, to damage the prospects of a member of the congregation who was running for president?

Many - not all - who watch the extended version of Wright's speeches will find he comes across as thoughtful, passionate, compassionate and learned. He is a preacher who condemns sin, whether committed by individuals or governments. Like most ministers in the African-American church, he embraces the cause of social justice.

He's not a politician, which means he doesn't have to worry about losing the votes of people who don't like what he has to say. He's not interested in the competitive flag-wrapping that passes for modern politics.

Nor is Wright looking for a job as a political analyst. TV commentators who are complaining that Wright is exploiting his 15 minutes of fame should know better. There isn't a producer on the Sunday talk shows, cable TV or talk radio who wouldn't love to have snagged Wright for an interview in the last six weeks. He turned them all down, mostly, I believe, because he doesn't want to talk politics.

Wright went on Moyers' show because Moyers often interviews religious figures. He spoke to the NAACP because they were giving him an award. He was at the National Press Club keynoting a two-day symposium on the prophetic tradition of the African-American church.

Those appearances won't get Larry King-sized ratings, let alone those of American Idol. But people in the audience responded with genuine enthusiasm, and the discerning few who watched on C-Span or YouTube saw more than the caricature the media has portrayed.

That may not help Barack Obama, who is trying to walk a politician's line, trying to distance himself from the caricature without throwing Wright under the bus and alienating black voters - or his friends back at church.

But John McCain and his advisers ought to think about those audiences before building their campaign on the vilification of a respected pastor. In 1968, Richard Nixon's "southern strategy" drove black voters away from the Republican Party for 20 years. In 1988, Lee Atwater's Willie Horton strategy set Republicans back for another 20 years.

Willie Horton was a convicted rapist. Turning Jeremiah Wright into Obama's Willie Horton will likely hurt Obama at the polls, but it risks a backlash against McCain - at least from voters curious enough to watch the extended version.

Rick Holmes, opinion editor of the MetroWest Daily News, blogs at Holmes & Co. (http://blogs.townonline.com/holmesandco). He can be reached at rholmes@cnc.com.

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